Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Synopsis

After seven months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at Bill Willoughby, the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Jason Dixon, an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.

-The title/place name is oddly specific for such a nondescript town/place. Why the title? Is the town name important? Is it a small town? Large town? Small enough for one character to know about another character’s illness, but too big for hospital staff to know they shouldn’t put the perpetrator of violence in the same room with the victim of his violence? (But also, the hospital is so small-town they don’t have a separate burn unit?)

-Raped, murdered girl (who remains almost totally personality-less - except for being rage-y and teenager-y) at the center of a story again? Guess we’re going to continue to squeeze every last drop of we can out of that beautiful dead…

this is such an ugly movie. it tries to show it’s heart at times, but it’s still as cold as ice. the characters and what they go through have no meaning and no emotional impact on me at all, except disgust or boredom. the script is frustrating and sloppy and often times offensive even when it tries to be the opposite. only a few jokes really land, the rest feel forced, as does everything else

the main cast does their best, but only frances really shines through the mucky aura this whole thing gives off. sam rockwell has deserved attention for a long time, but not for this performance, not for this character. the whole…

Three Billboards follows a grieving, frustrated and burnt out mother played by Frances McDormand who personally challenges the town cops after they fail to catch the man who tortured and killed her daughter. Now I’ve had a lot of luck in recent weeks with films, I’ve seen some really good ones, but there’s something about this film that just lets you know that you’re in for a different calibre of film-making here. It doesn’t feel like a film that will come with hype and go with insignificance – characters, scenes and even the atmosphere of this small town of Ebbing become etched into your memory after you’ve seen it. From director Martin McDonagh, creator of the…

I'm surprised to find such distaste for this. I thought this was a great study on anger and how it can manifests within a community. People in this are both good and bad - much like reallife. This is a dark and bad natured film that feels refreshingly honest compared with the black-and-white moralising that we see all too often in contempory cinema. Every time I felt the script was being tied-up too neatly things took a left-turn and showed that life is full of uncertainty and cruelty. Also, I laughed a lot.